Bye Bye Wife-FI

A few weeks ago my wife FIRE’d from her job. I asked her if she wanted to do a guest post about it, as I guess that’s a thing in the FI space. She laughed and said something to the effect of “Dammit JSD, I’m a spreadsheet nerd, not a writer!“. 

Since this is kind of a big deal, I ended up interviewing her about it, and then running the post by her for accuracy. Since I’m a self-centered person who has to constantly fight the tendency to only care about myself, a bunch of my feelings about the whole thing are placed throughout. Long time readers, you’re used to that shit by now. Here we go!

Oh yeah, none of this is like a direct quote or anything. That sounds like way too much work.

Me: So, like…why did you leave your job?

Wife: Because it sucked.

OK, that’s not exactly what she said. But pretty much sums it up. Let’s try again.

Wife: I got to the point where I was constantly stressed about work, and it was bleeding over into our family life. I noticed I was shorter with the kids, and was dreading going into each meeting-filled day with minimal actual engineering work. This was despite having gone to part-time; I got put on a big, years-long project which though interesting in theory, had major political BS that sucked the life out of me. The role ended up needing a babysitter for action item lists, following up in yet more meetings and requiring more hours than I wanted to do. I could have done fewer hours, but my job would have been condensed to literally meetings and nothing else. I could have requested to get off the project too, but that would have been super weird politically, and that didn’t sit well with me. And I was already burned out on work stuff by now anyway. 

Moving to Eagleton was another big thing. Our kids’ school now starts an hour earlier than our old district, and we can bike with them to and from school. The biking is fun, but since our pre-schooler and 2nd grader have staggered start times, it ends up being about a forty-minute round trip for both drop off and pickup. Plus with the earlier end time, once we got home I’d probably have to put in another hour or two of work. I really wanted to do that as much as possible, but knew I’d be super stressed out the whole ride thinking about work. I really didn’t want to do that. I’ve been realizing all the meetings aren’t as important as being mentally present with my kids.

Finally, there is a lot of other stuff I want to explore. I’ve been watching volunteering opportunities pop up over the years that I wanted to do. I’ve been interested to see if I can start my own bookkeeping business. I want to spend more time involved at the kids’ schools like subbing or volunteering there. I know some people do this on the side, but I’m so intellectually drained after work that I lose all motivation to do this stuff. I got to the point recently where I decided to take days off work just to substitute teach (talk about opportunity cost there) and realized if I’m to that point, I might as well just quit to actually do it and the million other things on my to-do list.

Then there’s the money. We have enough to live our current lifestyle, though we won’t be buying a Tesla (wife here: JSD’s words, not mine. He’s the one who wants to sell half our savings for a Tesla!!) anytime soon. So why keep trying to work at a job that is stressing me out, making it difficult for me to be a parent who is present, and preventing me from trying other stuff I want to do? Especially when I don’t actually need to?

Me: That sounds about right. I love and support you. Huzzah! Also, this loss of income (that we don’t actually need, but would allow us to buy shiny pointless shit) stresses me the fuck out. I’m going back to work.

Wife: Yeah, bet no one saw that coming, lol.

Me: Just kidding, but not really. Think I will go back to grad school though, so I can eventually do work I want to do. Hey, look at that, I hijacked this post about you. See, I promised you my selfish human tendencies couldn’t help bleeding through. Let’s leave that rabbit hole for another day.

Wife: K.

-end interview-

There you have it, my wife left her job. I’m pretty excited for her, and stoked to spend more time with her. Her last two weeks there were stupid stressful, as her company was scrambling to get all her stuff handed off to other people. She ended up not completely leaving; they convinced her to stay on the payroll and help occasionally train new people. Should be a few hours a month, and it leaves the door open if she sees a project she wants to work on.

We’ve now moved from a Wife FI/Coast FI-ish lifestyle, and into a mostly FI thing. Though I’m still working my part-time EP gig, that’s not enough to completely cover our expenses. And while my wife does plan to do something which will probably make money, I’m hoping she’ll chill for more than a few months before trying to crush it or whatev. So we’ll likely end up drawing down our investments to cover our expenses. Scary, and exciting! That feels surrounding all that would be a good post; we’ll see if I get around to writing it. 

After leaving, she basically channeled our cats and napped a lot. Definitely seems more relaxed. Camping helped her decompress a bit, and she enjoyed the week off with our kids before school started much more than she has in the past. I did too!

On the first day of school, we watched the classic period piece Predator, which she had never seen. I think her life has been changed forever by said viewing, as anyone can identify with the timeless message that beautiful cinematic masterpiece conveys.

Aren’t we all just trying to get to the choppa? 

Like Dutch, my wife slogged through the jungle of corporate bullshit and battled the giant alien that is the existential struggle to define one’s existence outside of work. She jumped in slow motion away from the explosion triggered by the alien’s demise, emerging victorious to claim her freedom.

Yeah, that was definitely a metaphorical stretch. But fun, right? 

Stick around. 

Let’s see what happens next!